Pan Zero Day

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A real page turner. Puller is hired to look into a strange mystery in West Virginia and we follow him through a route paved with crimes and deceptions. And Baldacci keeps us glued to Puller's steps until the answer to the mystery is found.

I've started reading again after putting it off for 2 decades - yes, I know that sounds rather strange, but my reading history since my late teens has been almost exclusively non-fiction.After trying a few fictions (Hunger Games, The Time Traveler's Wife, Veronika Decides to Die", I thought I'd try a meatier book, and a quick search came up with "bestselling author David Baldacci".I decided on this particular book because the reviews were mostly encouraging, with quite a lot of people saying it's "not as good as some of his other books" - but as I'd not read any of his work, I thought it would be a good starting point.PACINGI found the pacing quite slow at the beginning. I think part of that was because of all the army lingo (or jargon?) that's used, and I kept losing track of all the abbreviations that US armies types like to use. It took me maybe a quarter way through the book before the pace picked up, and it started reading like a thriller. Once you get three-quarters of the way through the book, you will literally gobble up the rest in no time.CHARACTER DEVELOPMENTThere is a fair bit of character development in the book, but I can't really say too much in case of spoilers. Nevertheless, you start empathising with the two main characters about half way through the book. I'm quite glad the book stuck with the thriller side of things without descending into some romantic farce - too often I feel thrillers have unnecessary sex scenes, which add nothing to the plot. In this novel, there are definitely moments of romance or potential romance, but it never gets in the way of the story.STORYI've no idea how accurate all the army lingo is, but it sounded "real" to me. The story seems like something that really could happen, once you've read the whole book. At times, I was wondering whether some of it was contrived, but after a while the feeling of any contrivity would disappear - the writer has a knack of putting things in a way that you almost feel that you're there.ERRORSI noticed quite a lot of typos; and some of the wording used by the author meant I had to re-read sentences, sometimes a few times. I'm all for minimal use of punctuation, but there were times that a comma would have helped the reading. I recall two instances where there were actually missing words, along the lines of "John Smith would have known what to do" would be given as "John Smith would have what to do" - stuff like that spoils a novel, and you would think the editors would have spotted big 'uns like that. That's what loses 1 star for me.Overall, I'm very satisfied with the book. The story is very engaging, even if you're not an army type (and I'm not). The main protagonists are very likeable people who are also "very human" if that means anything to you.

David Baldacci selbst bezeichnet die Puller-Reihe als Hommage an Lee Child's Jack Reacher. Nun ist Baldacci selbst so erfolgreich, dass man ihm das glauben darf. Er hat es wohl kaum nötig, Lee Child zu kopieren.Als großer Fan von Lee Child wollte ich mit diesem Buch die Wartezeit auf den nächsten Reacher-Band überbrücken.Das hat sich für mich gelohnt. Puller ist irgendwie wie Reacher, nur anders - noch im aktiven Dienst, mit allen möglichen Ermittlungswerkzeugen in seinem Rucksack ausgestattet, fährt Auto und... das war's eigentlich schon. Außer, dass er noch einen (dementen) Vater und einen Bruder hat, der lebenslang (?) im Militärgefängnis sitzt. Ansonsten ist Puller eine nahezu identische Kopie von Reacher. Aber das ist es ja gerade, was mich dieses Buch ebenso verschlingen ließ, wie alle Reacher-Bücher zuvor.Zero Day ist gut und spannend geschrieben, alle Kapitel sind angenehm kurz, so dass man bequem mehrere davon innerhalb einer Mittagspause lesen kann oder bei anderen Kurzgelegenheiten. Zero Day hat mich überzeugt und ich werde auch die nächsten Wartezeiten auf Jack Reacher wohl wieder mit John Puller verbringen.

David knows how to keep your attention, have now read some 10 books by this author.....havent been disappointed so far.